The Reality Of Dreams And Nightmares
by Necroscape
Summary: A direct sequel to Symphony of the Night. Alucard comes face to face with an old dream and a new nightmare.
1. Under the Glass Moon

The Reality of Dreams and Nightmares

Chapter I: Under the Glass Moon

Two sets of eyes were visible in the darkness of this night, each throwing off their own moon's reflection. On pair was wide and observing, visible in the gaps of the dying tree. The other pair lay just below, these were piercing and still. Dangerous and entrancing. These were the eyes of a vampire, these were the eyes Alucard.

Behind his eyes his mind was being torn by thoughts to the point where he thought his skull might crack from the pounding war in his mind. One army fought for that of life, of self-preservation. This side was his will to survive, and their numbers were dwindling. Standing no chance against the powerful arms of annihilation, termination, suicide.

He thought he might stand on this hill, beneath this tree, until a new day was born. Allow the sun to slowly sear his flesh, cook his muscle, and turn his bone to ash. The pain would be extraordinary. But it would still yet be a far cry from the pain he felt now.

He existed for one sole purpose, and that was to continue the constant battle between father and son. And to be perfectly honest, he grew tired of it. He no longer cared for the fate of man. How could he when he no longer cared for the fate of himself? The two humans he had fought for, struggled for, were gone. His two most precious teachers, only memories.

His mother was now only a faint light to him. He would sit on countless nights like these trying to fan that flame, make her image yet more brilliant, more radiant as he could remember it being when he was but a small child. But the more he tried, the deeper that void of losing her became. But he could still yet recall her voice, always loving, always educating. His mother had taught him to love man. Sonia had taught him to love.

The Belmonts. A long bloodline of vampire hunters from as far back as anyone could trace. Their name became legendary, but also feared. They possessed something of unnatural abilities and people did not care for these Belmonts because people fear what they do not understand. One after the other, each Belmont stood against darkness and triumphed with the famed whip held high.

Alucard knew the Belmonts well. He had fought alongside a good number of them. The most recent being Richter, who he had saved from the curse of Shaft. He admired the Belmonts for their strength and for their courage, but their name and their blood meant nothing to him. The Belmonts commanded respect by transcending the nature of humans, and this they got from Alucard, but he took no liking to the family.

However, if one would be so inclined to trace back the origins of the Belmonts, they would find one Belmont by the name of Sonia. She had emerged hundreds of years after the first of the slayers and, like so many other Belmonts, took whip in hand and stormed Dracula's castle. And this was one Belmont that Alucard had cared for. Still cared for.

Sonia Belmont, their bloodlines had separated them, their origins pitting them against each other. But they both had a common goal, to destroy the monster that was Dracula. And that they did.

Alucard's eyes grew hot with fresh tears as he recalled her expression when he had left her standing in the ruins of Dracula's Castle. She had looked so sad, wearing an mask of despair that could break an army. Her hand had been extended towards his retreating body, her voice breaking as she choked out his name, and the tears that shimmered in the rising sun's light.

But that certainly hadn't been the last time he laid eyes on her. From that day forth he kept a constant eye on her from every corner's shadow. He watched her change, and watched her age. Every evening she would return where the castle had stood and wait for him to return to her. How desperately and wanted to. How painful it was to resist taking her into his arms. But he did resist, but she never stopped returning there. Not even when her life was disappearing from her once vivid face.

Sonia had taken ill not long after the birth of her son. And every day for the years that followed she grew weaker. One evening he watched this ghost of a woman, now a gnarled skeleton, crawl the last few feet of her long trek to the very place she had stood the day Alucard left her. He heard her use the last of her energy to barely push his name from her withered lips, and then she was dead. And with her death, along died Alucard.

The Alucard that now stood on this hill was nothing but a mindless shell. He wandered with no destination, thought with no emotion. The only thing that broke him from this, brought little life into his animated body was thoughts of her, thoughts of Sonia. And these he tried so desperately to hold onto, despite it devouring him inside. And this is what it had brought him to, his sword at his throat, his hand clenched tight around the hilt.

His eyes slid closed and two flames were extinguished. One pair still flickered in the night, and now they broke from the branches of the tree and the two embers fell towards Alucard.

Alucard heard the crack of branches and the loud shriek that followed, which he swore was enough to shatter the glass moon. His sword already in a drawing stroke across his neck, he turned around and pulled the steel from his vein in time to separate the two lighted orbs.

He bent down to examine and found his hand clutching a handful of bloodied feathers. The thing which he had easily split in half like an axe to a log was an owl. His hand went to his throat and he felt a small canal in his skin. He was no longer sure whether his scarlet stained hands were from the bird or from his neck. But he found a realization more troubling to him than whether or not he had done any damage. For what purpose had the bird attacked? He knew of only one other place of where he was forced to cut a bird from the air, and he knew only one reason as to why. The influence of something sinister.


	2. The Graveyard, the Tower, and the Lady

The Reality of Dreams and Nightmares

Chapter II: The Graveyard, the Tower, and Her.

The clouds moved in one grey mass across the sky. Alucard was certain if those clouds ever parted, it would be as if there was a tear in the universe and he would be sucked into the sky, into some infinite darkness for all his existence. That would be a very long time. The clouds that moved lower, the ones rubbing against the ground and thickening the air around him, those kept secrets, only letting you see what they wanted you to see. What lay beyond that curtain of fog, Alucard prayed that he would not soon find out.

These were the things that Alucard first noticed, he did not address the digging pain in his back until the thoughts of clouds lifted from his mind. But now that his mind was on that pain it was no longer an irritation but grimacing torture. Alucard bared his teeth as he lifted himself off the ground and set his hands down behind him to hold him in his sitting position but found that he had only swapped one pain for another. He felt his hands being dug into, could feel the blood beginning to flow.

Alucard pushed off the ground, felt the cuts in his hands become deep incisions, and was now on his feet. He had been so fixed on that sky, that sky that told nothing but meant everything that he did not notice the ground on which he lay. When he finally did look down he found white matter lying as common as dirt on the ground around him. He knew precisely what it was. How could he not? He had seen masses of this crumbled structure before. The sight horrified him though he could not know why.

Scarlet paint on several of the fragments where Alucard had put his hands down was the only color in this gray and white plain, the only color in this gray and white world. The only sound was his movement. Or, Alucard had thought. But yes, there was another sound. Drums. Some beating rhythm far off in the distance. "Death drums" Alucard named them in his head.

His legs did not move easily underneath him and his feet never made a sure step. The ache in his thighs made each step agony and the unstable ground made each a fight for balance. A fight that Alucard was winning. He moved slowly but he moved. He had to move. The still are easy prey. Alucard was certain there were predators here, and he was indeed prey, but not an easy one.

To add to the present misery that his body was in, a headache was beginning to press against the sides of his skull now. To him it felt as though there were some iron clad soldier in there swinging one hell of a hammer against his head trying to escape. He wasn't so sure there wasn't. But his headache bore down on him in a steady rhythm, pain with a pace. Each throw of the hammer corresponding with those drums, the death drums. They were louder now, closer. Alucard must be moving towards them, or they are moving towards him.

Alucard could see his breath spiraling upwards and mixing with the white dense of fog around him. Death's hand gripped his spin, frosting over his bones, and throwing his cloak around him, concealing him in darkness. But it wasn't death's hand, just the cold that came from the shroud of a shadow that now loomed over him. And Alucard was forced to stop. Not by the sight of the goliath of stone before him but the feel of it against the front of his body. He had not seen the wall, not known it was there, and only when he came toe to toe with it did the fog clear it into sight. The fog only shows you what it wishes for you to see, when it wishes for you to see it.

The stone wall seemed like an endless plain, a whole other world turned on its side. Alucard saw that the wall's horizon only after following it just below the clouds, not quite tearing through them and Alucard was relieved by this, but his relief only soon turned to complete mortification. He saw only one thing taller than this colossal wall and that was the tower that stood erect behind it. It peeked over the top of the wall and punctured the ceiling of existence. He knew the room at the top of the tower stood beyond, stood in that darkness he had first feared when he saw that sky, and he knew who dwelled there.

He felt the cold trickle of sweat across his brow and let it freeze on his cheek. The sky, the fog, the bones, the hooves, and the wall were all a wielded hammer inside his head. What hooves? What about the drums? There were no drums. Only the sound of horses racing, racing towards him. And now the sound of his own feet pounding across the ground. The rhythm of horses was now accompanied by the sound of snorting breath in Alucard's ears. His own frantic breath seemed more distant to him then the sounds of those sure death bringers behind him.

Finally after many battles Alucard lost the war with balance. His leg came down and his feet betrayed him. Fog turned into clouds and the pain in his back returned but with a certain spiteful vengeance against him for ever getting up at all.

Alucard thought that he finally knew what it was like to be in the middle of a cloud during a lightning storm. The thunder of hooves sounded around him and he knew that a man who fought a storm was foolish. The ground rumbled beneath him, twisting the jagged fragments farther into his back, and the huge steps of horses threatened to add his broken bones to this surface graveyard. His bones remained intact however and the sound of horses no longer resided behind him but only in front of him. He thought perhaps that the riders had missed him, had not seen him, or did not care he was there. A second thought brought the conclusion that even a man who would fight a storm would not have thoughts as foolish as those.

The noose fell around Alucard's neck and he enjoyed one last breath before the only thing in his lungs became an empty burning. He struggled at the loop tightened around his throat but his efforts were quickly ceased when the rope threatened to pluck his head from his shoulders.

Alucard's body whipped around and the world rolled beneath him. He was being dragged across the boney dessert and came to fear the sounds of drums moving away from him more than he would ever fear the sound of them moving towards him. Like glass,the shards of bones tore his clothes, only to do the same to the flesh beneath.

Alucard's teeth were bared and he thought he heard them crack inside his skull. He managed to bend his head backwards, later when he would find part of his scalp missing and would decide this was a poor choice, to get an idea of what sought to tear him apart. He saw two horses, and four gigantic hooves. The horses' intestines bounced around inside their open cavities and Alucard found the movement oddly hypnotizing and the only thing that took his eyes away from those sloshing insides was the spinal cord that fluttered behind the horse like a tail.

Another fog came into Alucard's vision, this one black, dark. The world around him grew dim and he found himself longing for that vile air he had found utterly disgusting when his eyes opened to this place. But he was never engulfed by that black, it drew back as a breath was drawn in. The Valhalla Knights had released the rope and steadily the drums faded away. Alucard took a long moment to breath, to do nothing else but consume the air around him.

Alucard rolled over on to his stomach and flinched back when he again came face to face with a stone wall. This one was significantly smaller and on it was engraved one word, SONIA. This only made Alucard curl back farther, his eyes as wide as that moon the night he had thought of her again. He retreated, crawling backwards from the grave. He would rather swim in a sea of bones that kneel above hers. But his retreat was stopped. He tried but he couldn't move. He thought fear immobilized, struck him into paralysis. But it wasn't the sight of the grave, it was the hand that gripped his ankle. It emerged from the ground and held fast to his leg. He gave another great tug and managed a few feet but at a cost.

The hand never left his ankle, Alucard had only succeeded in pulling the upper torso of some brittle figure from the ground. It was a sneering skeleton with a moldy mess of blonde hair pasted to the top of the skull. Alucard felt a scream ripping from his throat and the skull screamed with him. Screaming with him and pulling Alucard closer despite all his struggles. Pulling him in to her grave.

The moonlight bounced off of Alucard's wide eyes once the veil of skin was lifted, making them glow like the eyes of a frantic animal being eaten alive. Like so many frantic animals in this dying forest.

Alucard had set off from the hill days ago, he knew the influence of the castle and to him it was like north to a compass. He had come to this ghastly forest the night before and had sat for rest. One that he was just now waking from.

His mind flashed images of everything he had seen in that hell's dream and continued to replay them for his viewing pleasure. It had seemed so real to him, but don't all dreams? He still felt the grip of that hand on his ankle. He looked down at it and saw that a vine had wrapped itself around that ankle. He reached down to pull it off and found his hands being penetrated by thorns, like the shards had in his dream.

His wide eyes flickered upwards and he saw a massive blue bud opening as if his presence was the sun. The woman inside flipped her golden hair around her body, exposing her breast and predator eyes.

Alucard flung his body to the right and heard the sound of something tearing through the ground where he had been lying. Another carnivorous vine speared through the ground between in legs and rattled in the air, seeming angry that it had not tasted his blood. Alucard drew his sword and severed that vine that had held him from freedom. Now free, Alucard flung his body again, avoiding a rain of darts of blue roses. Alucard leaped into the center of the flower, he could feel the woman's fleshy mounds pressing against his chest as he drove the sword through her stomach. The Venus Weed let out a loud screech and shriveled in a second what a whole winter would take.

Alucard jumped from the center before the bulb closed disintegrated into the rest of the compost on the forest floor. But on his landing his feet buckled beneath him and he gave to his knees. It was then he saw the barbed rose stem growing from his thigh. He grabbed the flower around the thorns, blood seeping from his grip, and tore the rose from his leg. He knew very well the poison that these flower possessed. He also knew very well the poison that Dracula's castle possessed. He moved on.


End file.
